Author Topic: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?  (Read 13805 times)

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
It should also show up on the map even if you annihilated every bandit on the field. You encounter a group of bandits with a speaking leader on each of them. Did you scour the entire maps?

Also, durlag's tower is endgame content, be very carefull when entering :).

 
Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
It should also show up on the map even if you annihilated every bandit on the field. You encounter a group of bandits with a speaking leader on each of them. Did you scour the entire maps?

Also, durlag's tower is endgame content, be very carefull when entering :).


Yeah I dunno Bandit Camp isn't on the world map. Maybe it's because I let Tranzig go. He spilled the beans about meeting Tarzok in either of those locations and at that time those locations showed up on the map but not the Bandit Camp. So I went searching those locations but only found the named bandits, not the camp. I'll check it out again after I finished with this Durlag's tower. Maybe should have just killed the guy but whatever that's long ago.

But yeah I'm already halfway up Durlag's tower, killed 3 Battle Horrors and 2 Doom Guards, but some Greater Basilisk is killing me outside on the roof so I might check out the interior some more. And I'm still on chapter 3 btw :P

Some parts of the game are dumb though, like this THACO thing I don't get it and the manual doesn't say anything about it. Why does my character have a THACO of 17 with her morning star but Imoen has a THACO of 9 with a Short Bow (both weapons +1). Is it based on DEX? Or is it based on character class or something? Like Imeon is a human thief with DEX 17 and my char is an elf cleric with DEX 11 (and only strength 16 so damage bonus but not a hit bonus). I think even imeon's THACO with a short sword is 13 or so, much better than my char.


I don't like that levelling up is so non-interactive. The only one who gets to increase skills is the thief, and sometimes when you get a proficiency point you can't even spend it on something useful (like something you've already spent points in). I guess Clerics get new prayers to say so that's where the enjoyment comes from them.

Also the Mages are dumb in some ways.  Like needing to write spells and having a chance to not even do it successfully. I hear theres a mage shop in Baldur's Gate but I can't even get in there, meanwhile Dynaheir has two 3rd level spots with nothing to use there. Can't find anything 3rd level. And most of the spells I get are off Hobgoblins and Gnolls, two creatures which don't even use spellcasters. After I failed to copy a certain spell twice with dynaheir I just save scum the spell writing now. So annoying.

But whatever if I can get this bandit camp maybe I can advance the story.
I ended up dropping the half-elf twins or whatnot for Viconia and Kirin. Though I need to do some evil because Viconia's getting unhappy. I figured my character a drow which is why I chose neutral and picked up Viconia but recently realized  I got one neutral, one evil and four good characters now. Oh well. The other four don't need to know. I guess since I don't have spell resistance I'm not technically a drow, but whatever I wish it had given me the option in the char creation.

Ran into some other people, like some pirate chick along the coast by the lighthouse, or shar-teel or some doo-gooder up by the farm I think but told 'em all to buzz off.


 

Offline karajorma

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
THAC0 is based on level and either strength (for melee weapons) or dexterity (for missile weapons). A front line fighter needs to be strong but there's no reason a thief shouldn't be an expert archer so they made it work that way round.
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Offline Scotty

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
THAC0 stands for "To-hit armor class zero".  It represents the number you have to roll in order to hit a hypothetical "best" mundane armor person.  If someone has armor class 10, instead, then if you have THAC0 17, you only need a 7.

There's a reason it got superseded by AC and attack bonus.

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Halfway *up* Durlag's Tower.  Heh. 

Up is not the direction the real meat of that dungeon goes in. :p 

Come back later.  Greater Basilisks are the least of your worries.  Though I don't think you can even get inside without stopping by Ulgoth's Beard first.

Also, there's no way a decision can lock you out of the main quest.  Tranzig might have stuff you might have found useful, but otherwise, letting him go doesn't change anything.  Go back to Larswood and Peldvale and make sure they're swept clean.  The Bandit Camp should appear once that's done.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2014, 07:04:36 am by Aesaar »

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Mandatory Emoen fap post.

I figured you for a Vicona man. You've toned down.


I toned up after the game released and I grew up.
 I serve my girlfriends flaming fist now.
And that toned me down :nervous:
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Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
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-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Finally found the bandit camp. As it happens the trigger to getting it on the map was not in the two areas mentioned by the wizard, but in a completely different area in a part of the map I had already explored. Kind of annoying. But at least the game isn't broke

 
Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
And man Durlag's dungeon is too long. Fought some chess match and thought it was the end but there's another level still it seems or two. I think the chess match ended up far less clever than the game designers thought it would be, dunno why they introduce all these rules and then just have the enemy mob rush the players and not conform to the rules themselves.

 

Offline Torchwood

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
"Wait a minute, did you just move a bunch of fields in one turn?"

"Yeah, so?"

"That's against the rules, isn't it?"

"Screw the rules, I have green hair!"

And that's how it happened.

  
Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Some of these boss battles in Baldur's gate are just straight bull****, like the ****in demon in ulgoth's beard. Who balanced that ****? Not to mention the fact that the game railroads you into a certain outcome. People can pick pocket you in the middle of a fight but you can't pick pocket an enemy that doesn't know you're there, nor does backstabbing someone before they do their dastardly deed reward you in any way beyond base amount of experience.

But hey! Let's make a boss enemy that:
1. Attacks with Vampyric touch, so if the player spawns mobs they just boost the enemy
2. Has the ability to cast a freeze and die gib spell on PCs while battling skeletons 20 feet away, forcing the player to cast dispell to save their PCs and subsequently lose their own buffs. And for that matter why does magic disspell potion effects?
3. Is immune to pretty much all magical attacks, magical effects and normal weapons
4. Can kill level 8 or 9 characters in 3-4 hits. All the while regenerating health with every hit

NOT TO MENTION, has 6 potential re-spawns to full health via cult standbys.


Game's pretty enjoyable but what a stupid ****ing boss fight.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
You could try killing the cultists first? At least that will keep the demon from respawning.

Anyway, your bigger problem is probably that you're playing Tales of the Sword Coast content which was an expansion to Baldur's Gate and more or less written to happen after the events of Baldur's Gate.

Unless you've already gone through the main quest of BG, you're probably a fairly low level character still and if you think you can beat the game's most powerful bosses with low level party, you're going to have a bad day. You probably don't have powerful enough weapons, fighters, or magic attacks to damage the demon significantly (although magic missile WILL work, technically), and the characters' saves are probably fairly low as well.
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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
You could try killing the cultists first? At least that will keep the demon from respawning.

Anyway, your bigger problem is probably that you're playing Tales of the Sword Coast content which was an expansion to Baldur's Gate and more or less written to happen after the events of Baldur's Gate.

Unless you've already gone through the main quest of BG, you're probably a fairly low level character still and if you think you can beat the game's most powerful bosses with low level party, you're going to have a bad day. You probably don't have powerful enough weapons, fighters, or magic attacks to damage the demon significantly (although magic missile WILL work, technically), and the characters' saves are probably fairly low as well.

I've killed all the cultists first and then attacked the guy with ranged attacks as it suggests but didn't take 'im down. Even after kiting him around for 5 minutes while the rest of the party shot at him. The wiki suggests using undead minions to distract him, which I did. Problem is the animate undead spell is the same tier as dispel magic so I inevitably run out of spells or have my casters death gazed at the same time (two clerics and one wizard).

I'm under the impression the demon fight is the climax to the Durlag's tower dungeon. I've finished that so my characters are strong enough for that but apparently not strong enough for this guy. Not sure how it would work differently if playing from the appropriate spot. Or if that Vampyric touch only works for one guy, and doesn't accumulate, maybe I can spawn in a bunch of other mooks as well with summon creature but still would be a case of trying to take the guy down at range at the same time that he's healing from killing other guys.

Maybe I'll come back to him, or maybe I'll just run from the save where Imoen one-shot the cult priest with a backstab. Of course when she does that, the soultaker dagger isn't on the priest body or on the body of any other priests. If the main quest is already done, don't see the point of coming back to this guy unless it will give me a boost in the sequel. And you'd think something like the Staff of Heavens or whatnot that you can buy in town would work well against a demon. It's a cleric/druid only wand but I don't think it does anything against the guy whatsoever when one would think it should be doing full or double damage. Maybe D&D isn't set up to have god magic counteract other god magic.

As for gear, I dunno. Most of my guys have negative armour values from -1 to -3, clerics and wizard all have +1 or +3 slings with +2 bullets, +2 Mace, +1 Warhammer with lightning, Frost Wands, Sleep Wands, Paralyze Wands, Monster Summoning, Staff of Heavens, Minsc has Flame Sword, Spider sword, Crossbow of Speed with +1 or Lightning Bolts, Imoen and Kevil or whatever both have enchanted bows with acid, biting and +2 arrows, Imoen has the 1d6+9 staff, Kevil's got a +2 or +3 two handed sword of some sort. etcetera. Suppose I could try summoning in some other mooks to start then summon in skeletons later and take more dispel magic. My cleric can get 3 animal summong spells and 4 undead or disspells plus viconia with another 1 and 2 and whats her face mage who's got most stuff except 5th level spells. . . or just do the main quest instead.
« Last Edit: April 03, 2014, 12:43:32 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 

Offline Mebber

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
The demon can be pretty nasty, one of hardest battle in the first game as far as i remember. It's been a very long time since i've played BG1 the last time.

I usually relied heavily on AoE spells in BG (some say this is cheap but who cares) as a method of weakening nastier bosses or even kill whole mobs of lesser enemies. After reading through an old post of mine i think i used a similiar tactic against the demon: i rushed the cultist chamber with my buffed group, stayed close to the entrance and ordered my spellcasters to unleash some AoE spells (especially fireballs) and used ranged attacks at the cultist to get rid of them. First concentrated on the cultist leader, summoned mobs to distract (not even harm) Aec'Letec. I've ignored the demon at this stage, killing the cultist was the goal. Using otilukes sphere against the demon is worth a try, if it succeeds you have more time to get rid of the cultists. Dunno anymore if he's immune to spells like grease and web, but if not, try to cast 2-3 of these, could slow him down quite a bit. Dispel Magic (or even better, i think there are arrows in Bg1 who cast "dispel magic" on impact) can free NPC's if they're effected by the demons gaze.

After killing the cultists i fled the chamber, healed and buffed (haste, invisibility, all sorts of potions and protection spells, free movement... all i could think of, but it's important to check how long the buffs will work - casting the long-lived ones first and the short-lived last is obviously important) my two main melee chars and send them back into the chamber (alone) to finish off the demon.

Using only two fresh, buffed fighters with good magic weapons was more efficient than risking my whole group i think, and they killed the demon quite fast. If one of the melee fighters is gazed, i guess you could send down a caster, cast dispel magic and go back upstairs again. If you can't split up the group (like "You must gather your members" or however this dumb message was), you could try to re-enter the chamber with your whole group, attack only with the buffed melee chars and run away in a far corner with the rest of the team so they're not endangered.



« Last Edit: April 03, 2014, 01:12:27 pm by Mebber »

 

Offline Aesaar

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
It's worth noting that if you've hit the xp cap, there's no reason to kill the demon except for bragging rights.  IIRC, you get no reward for it except XP.

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
"Wait a minute, did you just move a bunch of fields in one turn?"

"Yeah, so?"

"That's against the rules, isn't it?"

"Screw the rules, I have green hair!"

And that's how it happened.

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Offline Mikes

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
I mean this in the most polite way possible and not in the least personal, more like a random though on the status quo in general: ... What's wrong with gamers nowadays? ;)

Sorry but...  just about 1-2 years ago I dragged out Planescape Torment, which I missed when it was originally released (yes duh!) and enjoyed the heck out of it.
Is it all about the ultra handholding and quest markers/directions that people can't live without anymore or what is it?

It certainly can't be that new games are so much better nowadays that the classics seem lackluster ...  actually, the contrary ... playing PST constantly reminded me what is missing in today's games and especially in game's storytelling.

... to the point where more recent Bioware (and other RPG) releases all seem like some shadow of the glorious incarnations we already had in Baldurs Gate and Planescape.

/shrugs. My random thoughts while reading this thread anyways.


 

Offline zookeeper

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
I haven't really seen anything here that relates to handholding in the form of quest arrows or otherwise dumbing down games.

People mostly complain about things that make the game frustrating for them, such as apparently in this case, having a boss that's basically unbeatable without out-of-game prior knowledge or without lots of saveloading to find a loophole to exploit or by essentially just getting lucky.

Some people like the game to be like a puzzle for them to figure out, other people want the game to give them a so-called fair chance, and those things are very different from "easy" and "hard".

 

Offline Mebber

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
Quote
People mostly complain about things that make the game frustrating for them, such as apparently in this case, having a boss that's basically unbeatable without out-of-game prior knowledge or without lots of saveloading to find a loophole to exploit or by essentially just getting lucky.
Some people like the game to be like a puzzle for them to figure out, other people want the game to give them a so-called fair chance, and those things are very different from "easy" and "hard".


To use this game as an specific example, the boss isn't unbeatable at all, and all you need to know is found in the game itself. The rules, the system, the spell effects, it's all there (BG shipped with a nice manual), and if the info is used, what seems to be an "unbeatable foe" becomes suddenly very beatable. It's just that the system is quite complex and requires a lot of time to dwell into. But that doesen't mean it's not fair, or only luck-dependant. Even with a system based on dice rolls, you can develop reliable, perfectly working strategies to beat the game with luck playing only a minor role. But again, this requires to dwell deep into the game mechanics. That's something many people like (they even developed IWD1+2 because so many people actually enjoyed this seemingly "unfair" combat system) and is part of the game. Of course it's not for everybodys taste, but thats no reason to call the game "bad" or "unfair".




 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
ARCANUM : OSAMO is my second favourite old RPG after fallout.


Edit- called it the right thing :0
« Last Edit: April 13, 2014, 11:11:18 am by Dekker »
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
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Offline Mr. Vega

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Re: What's so great about Baldur's Gate?
I would have said that the BG1 conversion for the big picture mod of BG2 is the best way to go. You don't even have to import your character, the game goes on almost seemlessly from the ending of bg1 to bg2. How awesome is that?

Except for the ****ty railroad plot.

"You are suddenly captured by bandits who appeared out of nowhere and somehow surprised you all! You wake up in a dungeon with all of your stuff gone." ****! Why not just say "Rocks fall, everyone dies is knocked unconscious" and be done with it! :p 

I loved BG1 but whoever wrote the plotline for BG2 needs ****ing shooting. While there are some great ideas in there did they have to tramp them through every ****ty D&D cliche? Thank **** they didn't do that for BG1 or it would have been "**** Candlekeep, let's have them all meet in a tavern where a shady guy gives them a quest!"
I played BG2 first and while the railroad plot didn't bother me as much as it does for some people, I couldn't make heads or tails of the counterspelling system (I tried to be an anti-mage mage without having a clue what I was doing) and I couldn't get half my chars to be effective in combat (Mazzy couldn't hit ANYTHING no matter what I did). I immediately quit upon getting dumped in Bodhi's Dungeon. But a few months later I got intrigued by it again, did some reading on the spell system and hunted down scrolls of Secret Word and Breach as soon as I could, replaced Mazzy and Anomen with Keldorn and Minsc (yes I ditched Minsc my first playthrough, I was young and stupid), switched to a male char rather than the female one I usually play in RPGs, hoping that the better romance plots might make the game more interesting....and this time, I stumbled onto Viconia. Because of her, BG2 is now one of my favorite games ever.

And you gotta admit Irenicus is a great great great villain.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2014, 11:11:59 am by Mr. Vega »
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